Friday, Sept. 11, marks the eighth anniversary of the deadliest crime recorded within our borders. On that fateful day in 2001, thousands of lives were lost as three New York City towers crumbled to dust at the speed of gravity. Improbable as it was, the crime has never been honestly investigated. It did, however, provide the excuse needed to plunge us into endless wars against unspecified terrorism and thereby allow our government to create Homeland Security, the Patriot Act, and to shred our constitutional rights. The infamous date has since been marked on our calendars as Patriot Day.
In creating the constitutional Bill of Rights, our founders invested the right to dissent as the “patriotic” duty of every citizen. Today, based on the attacks of 9/11, we are no longer free. Americans may be imprisoned without being charged of a crime and rendered without trial to unidentified foreign prisons known for torture. A new president promising change fails to fight for that dream, instead continuing to support the military-industrial-banking powers that have usurped control of Congress and thus our nation’s destiny. The most valid test of a citizen’s patriotism will always be whether to remain silent, fearful of internal threats and imaginary alien “terrorism,” or to question a government’s unconstitutional actions.
As the memory of 9/11 fades to become another unsolved “conspiracy,” there’s still time to follow our founders’ heritage by taking up the patriotic banner of revolution and exerting more than mere silent hope.
This article appears in Sep 10-17, 2009.